Say It With A Smile

Michael Marshall Smith once said, ~Hotels see a lot of life. Hotels get kicked around. The action the average city hotel sees would give a normal house a nervous breakdown in a day. In the small hours the building has some time to itself, to think its big, slow thoughts. To wander the halls then was to sit down with some big brick animal in darkness and listen to it breathing at rest.~ If you think about it, life is like working in a hotel as there are certain positive and negative aspects where it can most definitely feel like you’re constantly living in and/or experiencing a customer service type mentality. A mentality where it can leave anyone absolutely exhausted in every sense of the word. For it’s a thought provoking situation indeed knowing how insanely crazy and chaotic life can truly be, just like working in a hotel.

Without a doubt, working at the front desk of a hotel can sometimes feel or see life step up in a negative or positive way and hit the bell otherwise known as reality. In other words, life has the propensity to stand at your proverbial front desk with either a friendly or aggressive attitude and hopefully you're handling the fast paced and high-stressed situations with a tremendous amount of strong composure. Of course, it’s how one is able to react during those aforementioned fast paced and high stressed situations that inevitably determines whether you have the ability to stay calm and greet, so to speak, whatever/whoever is standing in front of/across from you with absolute professionalism or end up folding completely under the pressure.

As I said before, it can be insanely crazy and chaotic working at a hotel, which is considerably similar to life as well. Thinking about it further, working as a hotel operator your main objective is speaking with and then directing calls to different areas of the hotel. In some aspect, each of us on a seemingly daily basis find ourselves “answering” calls in different aspects/stages of our lives and determining if they’re considered positively/negatively relevant/important in our overall journey of life. What it primarily comes down to is taking the time to listen, understand and then making the proper judgement call in directing to the right areas of one’s lessons life knowing any mistakes or miscommunication made ended up resulting with an unfortunate mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual loss.

Let me ask this question: do you think working in housekeeping at a hotel and relationships are in any way synonymous with each other in regard to life? I think so. How? Essentially, it’s a housekeeping staff’s objective to clean up a guest’s room after they have checked out and depending on if they possibly left it an utter mess they do their best in preparing it for the next guest checking in. Oftentimes, that mentality relates to relationships in the form of dating or marriage. I think it’s safe to say we’ve all experienced moments in life where housekeeping was needed because a particular guy/girl in question left the room otherwise known as your heart a mess and it took you quite some time to clean it up. The question remains though: is your heart still being cleaned from the mess or is it ready to have someone ready to check in?

Eleanor Roosevet said, “True hospitality consists of giving the best of yourself to the guest.~ In retrospect, life consists of finding yourself in multiple positions of sorts and doing your best in being skilled like being an employee at a hotel working in areas such as management, food service, valet, engineering, concierge, etc. Ultimately, each hospitality/customer service position has its own trials and tribulations but it’s worth it knowing the hard work put into it does get recognized not only by your peers, but the “guests” you encounter on a semi-daily basis. Granted, it’s an added bonus if you receive rave reviews, especially from a “guest” you’ve interacted with and know you by name. In the end, before clocking into your shift of life, clear your mind, take a deep breath afterwards, and remember don’t forget to say it with a smile.